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Should Marketers Care About Wireless?

May 29, 2015

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By: Liam Pickard

Marketing Manager

S3 Consulting

I am going to put myself out there straight away and say HELL YEA WE SHOULD!

Wireless technology is opening up a whole raft of marketing potential across business. The problem is not enough marketers really understand what the technology is capable of doing for us. History is littered with marketing ideas that never really took off, and largely I surmise this is down, not to a lack of innovative thinking, but a lack of technical know how.

If you take wireless technology for example, it has amazing potential to help marketers identify, learn and nurture your audience like no technology has before. Get it wrong however and your audience will soon get bored and switch off! There is a well known and popular bar chain, I guarantee you have been to at least one of their establishments, that offers a free WiFi service via a portal log in and promises to help you enjoy your experience and offers you a service you want so you can keep tweeting, snap-chatting and don't tell anyone cheating at the pub quiz! The only problem is the application is cumbersome the WiFi connectivity is terrible and I normally just flick to my mobile 4G connection as its more reliable and less of a head ache. That company is now getting nothing out of me as I am not using their app or their network. Sorry ROI you will just have to wait for someone on an older phone who needs your 1 star service.

I do not doubt that the reasoning behind this marketing initiative is well thought out from a marketing sense, but what about the technical? Did this marketing team know that with the increase in mobile devices the network they have throughout their sites would not be able to cope with the sudden influx of clients, probably not. Do they understand that the new wave of mobile phones can operate on a different Hertz rate to older phones, freeing up the channel making it clearer for traffic to travel and reducing latency issues? Again probably no, and likely they do not know this requires an update to the access points used to get on their network. Simply engaging with the technical team and a good technology partner and this could all have been avoided and all the data and engagement a marketer could dream of would have been theirs.

It is time for marketers and technical teams to embrace what we can do for each other. Whilst IT has seen its budgets pushed down and calls for better cost efficiency, marketing has been enjoying growth year on year when it comes to budget. Combining forces we can share the costs of these projects and IT can get the latest and best technology such as Cisco Meraki and Marketing can get engaged with the source of all ROI. THE CLIENT!